News - Bookselling

Bookselling This Week is pleased to report that, after our Citywide Book Club list went online March 13, we received many e-mails from both libraries and booksellers detailing their own particular community book-reading efforts. Additionally, the Library of Congress (LOC), www.loc.gov/cfbook/, now has a listing of Citywide Book Clubs, and some community efforts were added or updated using information from LOC’s Web site. The result has seen the list expand from 45 different community-reading initiatives to 65.

Rugged Land Publisher Shawn Coyne wants people to pay attention to books the way they pay attention to music videos. That’s why Rugged Land, a book publishing and film company, created a 40-second commercial trailer for one of its debut novels, Henry’s List of Wrongs, by John Scott Shepherd. The promo is due for release on the Rugged Land Web site on April 16 to coincide with the book’s publication date.

Books and coffee have a long history of association. Long before Barnes & Noble linked up with Starbucks, the coffeehouses of 18th-century London served as England’s "penny universities" where Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, and John Dryden socialized, sipped coffee, and sold their works. Two hundred years later, many booksellers feel they need to add a jolt of java to enliven their store’s atmosphere and boost sales.

New to the show this year, BookExpo America exhibiting publishers will be offering HOT DEALS -- including percentage discounts, free shipping, giveaways, and other cost-savings options -- to booksellers attending the convention.

The first lady, Laura Bush, will appear on a Get Caught Reading (GCR) poster to be released around the time of her second annual National Book Festival, scheduled to be held in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 2002.

Dan Jaffe, co-owner of Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma, California, and general manager of the entire group of eight Copperfield’s stores, died this month at the age of 50. The cause was apparently a heart attack, said colleague Tom Montan, who noted that Jaffe died at home sometime after March 16.

These days, the screech and hiss of an espresso machine is as common a sound in a bookstore as the beep of a cash register or the introduction to an author reading. An increasing number of bookstore owners are now required to know almost as much about paninis and half-caf-two-percent cappuccinos as they do about Michael Chabon and Margaret Atwood. So, if your bookstore doesn't have a café, should it? And if it already does, how do you go about improving it?

On March 9, Book Passage, www.bookpassage.com, in Corte Madera, California turned 25. This general-interest bookstore, noted for its author events, classes, conferences, and extensive travel books section, hosted a day of free, festive activities. The theme was "A Day of Storytelling" and top Bay Area writers participated in the celebration.

For two centuries, Charlottesville, Virginia, has drawn men and women of letters to live in its cultured environs: from Thomas Jefferson (whose Monticello is three miles east of the city) to current residents John Grisham, Rita Mae Brown, and National Book Award-winner John Casey. And for the past several years, Charlottesville's annual Virginia Festival of the Book has attracted thousands of visitors to a five-day menu of some 150 literary panels, talks, and readings staged in venues all around town.

Today’s literary publishers are keepers of the written word, Dan Simon, publisher of Seven Stories Press (Noam Chomsky’s 9-11), told a crowd of more than 45 potential and present-day literary publishers and writers at the New York Public Library’s Berger Forum on Wednesday, March 20. And, he added, it’s unfortunate that today’s publishing environment dictates that something so normal as publishing quality books and stories is considered "radical."